National Ballet of Cuba

Giselle

FridayJune 88:00 PM

Program

Giselle (Adam/Alonso) based on Coralli and Perrot

Program Notes

Director of the National Ballet of Cuba and one of the most important personalities in the history of dance, Alicia Alonso is the leading figure of classical ballet in the Ibero-American sphere. Alonso’s deeply humanistic interpretation of Giselle is considered the epitome of the romantic ballet tradition. Taking a French masterpiece based on a German poem, once best known through Russian interpretations, Alonso’s spectacularly re-created Giselle now defines the classic work.

Based on a fairy tale about a peasant girl who falls in love with a dashing prince disguised as a commoner, Giselle follows its heroine through a haunting story of betrayal, heartbreak, forgiveness and redemption. The title role of Giselle has been called “the ballerina’s Hamlet” and is regarded as one of the most difficult in ballet due to the intensely dramatic nature of the role as well as the physical stamina required to dance the lead throughout the full-length production.

About the National Ballet of Cuba

The National Ballet of Cuba is one of the most prestigious dance companies in the world and occupies a prominent place in the contemporary Hispano-American culture. The artistic-technical rigor of its dancers and the amplitude and diversity in the aesthetic conception of the choreographers, grant this grouping a relevant place among the great institutions of its kind in the international scene.

The company was founded in 1948, with Alicia Alonso as the main founder and the very first figure. In 1950 the Alicia Alonso National Ballet School was created, attached to the professional company. From the beginning, his artistic line started from the respect to the romantic and classical tradition, stimulating at the same time the creative work of choreographers who followed a line of searches in the national and contemporary.

Already in this early stage, the assembly of the full versions of classics such as Giselle, Swan Lake or Coppélia, was accompanied by works from the renovating movement of the Russian Ballets of Diaghilev as Petruschka or The Nap of a Faun; and of ballets created by national choreographers.

The advent of the Revolution in 1959 marked the beginning of a new stage for Cuban ballet. That year, as part of a new cultural program, the company was reorganized with the name of National Ballet of Cuba, and since then it has had a vertiginous boom, enriching its repertoire and promoting the development of new dancers, choreographers, teachers and others. creators in other genres related to dance, such as the plastic arts and music. Along with the improvement of the traditional repertoire, a thriving choreographic movement has been encouraged, with works that are located within the most significant achievements of contemporary choreography.

In addition to his intense activity in Cuba, where he has managed to socially project his art at a popular level, the National Ballet of Cuba annually develops a program of international tours, which takes him to stages in various countries in Europe, Asia and America. Important awards, such as the Grand Prix de la Ville in Paris and the “Félix Varela” Order of the Republic of Cuba, are added to the acclaim of the most distinguished representatives of the specialized critics and to the distinctions received by their figures, in a individual, in competitions and international festivals.

The National Ballet of Cuba is the maximum expression of the Cuban school of ballet, that on the base of the cultural legacy that provide several centuries of tradition in the theatrical dance, has obtained an own physiognomy in which that inheritance is fused with the essential features of the national culture.